I spent last weekend doing our taxes, as the extension deadline is fast approaching. My wife spent a good chunk of time redoing our budget, as we need to tighten up for a while to pay off our tax bill and a few other debts. We’d been tense with each other for over a week prior. She’s been worrying not only about what our tax bill would be, but also about a lean-looking August as far as income from my contract work.
It came to a head on Friday when we went out to dinner after my bike trip with my son. We were having a great time chatting and playfully batting seeds that were dropping from a vine next to our table on the outdoor patio at WA Frost. But when the subject of going on a camping vacation came up, she turned gloomy and stern about our financial situation and, pfffffffffft, the wind quickly went out of my romantic sails. I said “Can we talk about this some other time?” She agreed but I couldn’t quite get beyond it and later in the car on the way home, she confronted me about my mood. I wasn’t really aware of it, but once I started talking, it was clear I was still hung up. And she said the whole situation had been affecting her for weeks as well, that she didn’t intend to rain on our picnic but that it just came out.
I hated to admit it, but I was feeling like I was a lousy provider, that I wasn’t doing my part to bring home the bacon and support my family. To be confronted with our financial situation during a romantic dinner was a real bummer. Later, she said, “It’s not so much the lack of money that’s affecting our relationship, it’s our not dealing with it as a team.” She hit the nail on the head but it took me till the next day to realize it. And that was all that was needed to provide me the incentive to get the taxes done. I had to miss a motorcycle trials that I planned to ride on Sunday but I didn’t mind. By Sunday evening, we’d reconnected. But I can now see why some men get depressed or turn violent when they lose their jobs. It’s easy to embrace the mistaken idea that you’re not manly if you’re not providing.
Now my worry is the camping vacation. I all but promised my daughter that we’d be going, as we’ve not taken a family vacation since 1999 and we’re lonesome for our favorite campground, TwelveMile Beach in Upper Michigan’s Picture Rocks National Lakeshore. Norm says to go, that we’ll be resentful if we don’t, and that we won’t be as energized to work our respective businesses in the fall. I tend to agree but it’s hard to make a case for me taking two weeks away from “incoming producing” and “prospecting for new business” when I’m the one who’s put us in this position. All I can do, I guess, is push hard between now and then and see where we’re at when the time comes.
All this angst over money matters is the perfect backdrop for a different perspective. One of my sons and I played a financial education board game this week with a group of people we’d never met. My wife discovered Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad series of books and web site a few weeks back and the three of us have been immersing ourselves in examining his way of thinking about money and income.
The game, Cashflow 101, soon available to be played via the web, was damn interesting and fun — a sophisticated and more real-world Monopoly-type game where the goal is to get out of the Rat Race by having more passive income each month than expenses, no matter whether you draw a job card as a doctor or a janitor.
This could be an interesting development in my life. My wife’s waaaaay ahead of me, as all her monthly income from Melaleuca is residual. But I’m mentally primed to shift from the E and S side of his Cashflow Quadrant to the B and I side where I’ve been dabbling the past 3 years. Reading his books just reaffirms this and gives me access to tools, information, and people to accelerate the shift. I wonder where it’ll take me. Us, I mean. Or maybe just me. She objects that I’ve dismissed her financial sensibilities for years. Ouch. It’s AFOG time. Good thing our marriage is AFOG compatible right now.